(Untitled)

[geekette8]

Grr argh. I'm trying to remember a carol we used to sing at school. It wasn't in our normal hymn books, it was hand-typed and purple roneo'd (OK, dating myself here). I've never heard it anywhere else but as far as I know it wasn't written by our music teacher or anything

Comments

[oldbloke]

Odds on your music teacher still being extant?
Old school friends?

[geekette8]

Good point - I'll try facebook! Thank you!

[sidheag]

This is the kind of puzzle that ends up bugging me until it's solved, so when you find out, do come back and tell us!

I bet you can remember more about the music, and that might well help me. What kind of rhythm did it have? Fast, slow, bouncy, rocking? Three time, four time? And what kind of key or mode, or failing that mood? Was it a bittersweet joy or a plain old joyful joy?

[geekette8]

Heh, I will.

It was relatively bouncy and joyful (as almost all my favourite music is!). I *think* 4/4, but could easily be wrong.

Oh hey! I just remembered it!!! Trying to think of the time signature really helped. Thank you :-)

Rejoice and be merry, in songs and in mirth
Now praise our redeemer, all mortals on earth.
For it is the [fx:squeak] BIRTH day of Jesus our King,
Who brought us salvation, his prai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ai-ses we'll sing.

I think the last line was repeated rather than the third line, and I think the "mau" or "ma" word I was thinking of was actually "mirth".

Now off to google it!

[sidheag]

Hee hee, I thought that might happen :-)

Google seems to know it well, e.g.

http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-346832-8.pdf

Have to laugh at memory though. If I'd come across this, I don't think I'd have recognised it from what you said! I suppose your memory that it was about joy came from the instruction (what's the word for those words that come at the start of a piece of music to say how to approach it?) "Joyfully", the "kings" bit is the repetition of "Jesus our King" (I was looking for kings of orient...), and mirth was salient because of being the end of the first line?

[kaberett]

Ooh yes, that one!

[feanelwa]

It's not:
God bless ye merry gentlemen
Let nothing ye dismay
For Jesus Christ our saviour
Is born on Christmas day
To save us all from Satan's power when we had gone astray
O-o tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy
O-o ti-i-dings of co-omfort and joy
-is it?
(I always used to think when I saw that one, good job it was on Christmas day, eh, otherwise he would have missed the turkey, arf arf)

[geekette8]

Nope, but thank you for the idea! Problem solved, see above :-)

Arf arf indeed :-)

[samholloway]

Now you've solved the carol conundrum, can we thread-drift to talk about the copier? When I was at primary school (second half of the 80s), the school didn't use photocopiers for duplicating material for pupils, and so we used to get worksheets with purple writing on them, often a bit faded. I have a dim memory that there was something unusual about the paper itself.

Is that what you mean by a roneo'd copy? I've still never seen the machine that produced those copies, nor really thought about how it worked.

[geekette8]

Yep!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roneo

:-)

[samholloway]

OK, that sends me to 'Stencil duplicator'. However, there's a link on that page to the Ditto machine - a 'spirit duplicator'. That sounds more like what we had - I remember the smell of the pages now!

[tzf_frenchfry]

We called it a Mimeograph machine. Yes, I remember the smell too, and how the purple was always smudged.